Moving houses is already a nightmare of cardboard boxes and lost packing tape, but for a Tesla owner, there's this weirdly specific annoyance that comes after the move. You get in the car, click the right scroll wheel to voice-activate "Navigate Home," and the car starts routing you to your old driveway across town. It’s a small thing. But honestly, it’s the kind of friction that makes you feel like your "smart" car isn't quite keeping up with your life. You'd think a vehicle that can drive itself across a parking lot could figure out you live somewhere else now, right?
Well, it doesn't.
To actually change home address Tesla settings, you have to touch a few different layers of software. It’s not just the navigation map. It’s your Tesla app profile. It’s the Premium Connectivity billing address. It’s even the Geofencing settings for your HomeLink or myQ garage door openers. If you miss one, you’ll find your car trying to fold its mirrors at the wrong time or sending your Supercharging invoices to a house you no longer own.
The Navigation Fix: Where Most People Start
The most immediate thing you want to fix is the GPS. If you’re sitting in your new driveway, open the navigation search bar on the big touchscreen. You’ll see "Home" and "Work" at the top. Most people try to tap them and get frustrated when it just starts a route.
Here is the trick.
You have to press and hold the Home icon. Or, you can swipe it to the right. A little menu pops up or it clears the entry entirely, allowing you to type in the new coordinates. Once you’ve saved the new spot, the car "learns" this as the primary anchor for its logic. This is crucial because Tesla uses the home address to determine when to disable Sentry Mode or when to trigger "Tilt/Fold" on your side mirrors to fit through a narrow garage door. If you don't update this, Sentry Mode might stay active in your secure new garage, needlessly draining your battery (vampire drain is real, folks) while remaining off when you’re parked on the street at your old place.
Syncing Profiles vs. Local Changes
If you have multiple drivers in the house, things get a bit more complex. Since the introduction of Tesla Cloud Profiles, your settings are supposed to follow you from car to car. However, I’ve noticed—and many owners on the TMC forums have confirmed—that the Home address sometimes hangs onto the local vehicle storage.
If your partner’s profile still shows the old address after you’ve changed yours, they need to log in and do the same "long-press" dance. It’s a sync issue. Sometimes, a simple "two-button salute" (holding down both scroll wheels until the screen blacks out) forces the car to ping the motherland and pull down the updated profile data.
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The Part Everyone Forgets: Billing and Account
Updating the car is the easy part. Updating the Tesla "mothership" is where the bureaucracy happens. You need to jump into the Tesla App on your phone. Tap your profile picture in the top right corner, go to "Account," and then "Contact Information."
Why does this matter?
Registration. If you’ve moved states, this is a massive deal. Tesla’s Premium Connectivity and the upcoming FSD (Full Self-Driving) subscriptions are taxed based on your billing address. If you move from a tax-free state to somewhere like California or New York and don't update the address, you might be technically committing a minor form of tax evasion, or worse, your payment might just fail because the ZIP code doesn't match your credit card’s new billing info.
Then there is the Roadside Assistance factor. If you break down and hit that "Request Help" button in the app, the geofencing will find you, but the billing and dispatch records will pull from your account address. Keeping this current ensures that if they need to tow you "home," they aren't looking at a map of where you lived three years ago.
Charging and Geofencing Logistics
This is the nuance that separates the pros from the amateurs. When you change home address Tesla settings, your Scheduled Charging and Scheduled Departure settings might get wonky.
Tesla’s software allows you to set "Home" specific charging limits. Maybe at home you charge to 80%, but at work you don't charge at all. When you move, the car needs to "recognize" the new location as the "Home" zone to apply these rules. I’ve seen cases where people move, forget to update the location, and then wake up to a car that didn't charge because it thought it was parked at a "Public" location where the user had "Scheduled Charging" turned off.
- HomeLink/myQ: If you have the automatic garage opener, you have to delete the old "Home" location trigger and program the new one. This usually involves standing in your new driveway with your old remote or syncing the MyQ bridge.
- Mirror Folding: If you have a tight garage, you probably have "Auto-Fold Mirrors at this Location" turned on. The car saves this by GPS coordinates. You’ll have to manually fold them once at the new house and tell the car to "Remember this location."
Dealing with the "Work" Address
While we are talking about changing the home address, let's talk about the "Work" one. If you're a remote worker or your office moved, the process is identical. Swiping the "Work" icon to the right clears it. Interestingly, if you have a calendar synced to your Tesla app, the car will look at your next appointment and suggest a route. If that appointment says "Home" but the address in the calendar doesn't match the address in the car's GPS, the navigation gets incredibly confused, often looping you in a weird logic circle.
The Troubleshooting Loop
Sometimes, you do everything right and the car still thinks it’s 2022 and you're still in that apartment downtown. This usually happens because of a cached map error.
If the address won't save, try this:
- Drive the car about a block away from your new house.
- Clear the Home and Work addresses entirely.
- Perform a scroll-wheel reboot.
- Drive back into your driveway.
- Set the "Home" address while parked exactly where you want the car to trigger its "Home" behaviors.
This "reset" forces the GPS to pull a fresh coordinate string (Latitude and Longitude) rather than relying on a potentially outdated address database entry.
Actionable Next Steps for New Movers
Don't just change the map and call it a day. To truly transition your Tesla to a new residence, you need to follow a specific sequence to ensure the software behaves.
First, sit in the car and hard-press the Home icon on the nav screen to update the physical location. This fixes your GPS and mirror-folding logic.
Second, open your Tesla mobile app and update your "Contact Information" under the Account settings. This ensures your Supercharging invoices and subscription taxes are handled correctly.
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Third, re-calibrate your charging schedule. Check the "Charging" menu on your touchscreen to ensure "Scheduled Charging" is active for the new location.
Lastly, if you use a wall connector, make sure to update its location in the "Tesla One" or "Energy" section of your app if you took the charger with you. If you left the charger behind, ensure you've removed that specific Wall Connector from your "My Home" profile so the new owners can't see your charging history or use your data.
Moving is a mess. Your car's brain shouldn't be. Spend five minutes in the driveway doing these steps, and you won't have to manually override your mirrors or fix a navigation error every time you leave for work.